How Much Energy is Wasting When Household Appliances are Left Plugged

Did you know that even when household appliances are turned off, most are still using some electricity ? Good magazine has an interesting chart in their latest issue that details how much energy your vampire devices use, and how much it costs you to keep them plugged in. You can see the interesting vampire shaped illustration here. For example a plasma TV, for instance, can cost about $160 per year just to keep plugged in. I’m sure that this guide will be quite useful for those people who want to earn every penny. – Via – Lifehacker

The chart is, unfortunately not informative. Because all the numbers are of the “it depends” variety.

For example a Plasma-tv that is plugged in, but on standby, consumes anything between 20W and 0.1W, so the number given cannot even be considered to be “in the ballpark”.

In a year, it’ll consume somewhere between 0.8Kwh, and 175 Kwh.

That information is worse than useless. The only cure is to read the specs before purchasing new equipment, and if you’re curious about older equipment you have, either plug it out just in case, or just a power-meter to measure how much it’s actually consuming.